


What would you do, if it all came back to you?

by voices_in_my_head



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, get a tissue since we're not supposed to touch our faces, though probably more hurt but it's the batfamily so where's the surprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:55:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23186626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voices_in_my_head/pseuds/voices_in_my_head
Summary: "Still standing, Jason clicked on the folder and opened the first video – Jesus, there were quite a few – and suddenly Bruce was staring at him. He moved the mouse, thinking the video had frozen, but no, Bruce really did spend the first few seconds just staring. (...)“I… I found the book in your bedside table. “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”” He paused, looked away, then back at the camera. “You were always reading. I can’t remember the last time I just read a book for fun.”"
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 36
Kudos: 336





	What would you do, if it all came back to you?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Veto_power_over_clocks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veto_power_over_clocks/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Jason Project](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19899613) by [loosingletters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loosingletters/pseuds/loosingletters). 



> So, yesterday I asked Ceci for batfamily prompts, specifically Bruce & Jason and she mentioned something with books. She also said something more crack or fluff than angst but this is just the way Bruce is - he put the hurt in hurt/comfort.
> 
> Where exactly does this take place in canon? Wherever you want, my man.
> 
> Heavily inspired by "The Jason Project" by loosingletters. Absolutely worth a read.

Once Alfred had gotten the batcomputer running – it took at least fourteen passwords because Bruce was nothing if not paranoid – he left Jason alone, who couldn’t help but be thankful for it.

He knew that he wasn’t in the batcave to do anything bad, that he hadn’t asked for access to the batcomputer because he wanted something that would hurt… the others, but Alfred didn’t know that. Alfred just took him at his words of “there’s things I don’t know about Gotham anymore and this is the easiest way to find out” and had smiled and said, “of course, Master Jason” just like he used to when Jason shyly asked for a specific meal or told him about something new he’d learnt in school before… Before.

He was glad Alfred left him alone because looking at him too long made Jason feel things he wasn’t used to anymore. Being away from the manor, it was easier to let the hatred and anger fester, let himself feel as if those were the only things still inside him; as if they’d always been there. And yes, he was always angrier than others – _Dick_ – but there used to be good things too. Away from the manor, they were easier to forget.

Jason was halfway through the folder on the Maroni family before he thought “what’s in my folder?” and had to re-read the last two paragraphs because he couldn’t remember what they were about.

But it was useless. He read another page without a single word fully entering his brain and finally decided that this wasn’t a thought that was going away, that he might as well check.

The folder was, of course, inside about another half a dozen folders. And inside, there were a lot of other folders as well. None of them said “DEATH” but there had to be something. Bruce had to have his autopsy somewhere. Jesus Christ, there were probably plans too. How to get him back in the “family”, how to stop him, how to get him to… Arkham.

Jason breathed noisily from his nose. This was a mistake. This was all a mistake. He shouldn’t have come.

He got up, pushing the chair back, and the sound of the wheels dragging on the floor was rattling.

Jason was about to turn off the computer when he noticed a folder named “BOOKS” and he frowned as he stared. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Was it like… a list of the books Bruce was supposed to buy him for school?

Jason pulled the chair back to him and noisily dropped down on it. It wasn’t the same chair that used to be down here when Jason was a kid, though it was from the same brand. Of course, it wouldn’t be the same; with the amount of hours Bruce spent down here, it would probably have lost what made it ergonomic in the first place. God forbid Bruce didn’t care for his back.

( _He did break it,_ his brain whispered. _You weren’t there._ )

Jason made a noise from his nose, between a snort and something even he didn’t recognize. What did he think he was going to find in this folder?

He was playing nice with the bats for now, but that didn’t mean… That didn’t mean things would go back to how they were. He had killed people while Bruce refused to kill the Joker and that was just… Just the tip of the fucking iceberg, really, because he took a swim in the Lazarus Pit and meanwhile Bruce was replacing him.

Jason got back up; the chair went rolling back. He was breathing hard. Why the fuck was he even here? Not just the batcave, though that was a good fucking question – Jesus, Alfred just left him alone down here – but in fucking Gotham. He came here for a reason and nothing happened – _you just weren’t enough, he would have killed for Dick, for the Replacement, for the Demon Child, you just weren’t enough youjustweren’tenoughyoujustweren’t_ – but he was still here, still trying to play nice.

Jason put both hands on the desk and leaned forward. He tried to remember any breathing exercise, but it was all a mess in his head, from Bruce’s soft tones from when he first began training – _your breathing is the most important part. You need to keep calm no matter what. The second you panic…_ – to the ones he learnt in the League and with all his professors after.

Still standing, Jason clicked on the folder and opened the first video – Jesus, there were quite a few – and suddenly Bruce was staring at him. He moved the mouse, thinking the video had frozen, but no, Bruce really did spend the first few seconds just staring.

He looked… Well, like hell. It was clear he hadn’t slept in days and God knew in how long he hadn’t seen the sun, he looked paler than usual, and his hair was grimy in a way that wasn’t usual and he simply looked older. Jason had no idea when this video was supposed to take place; he genuinely looked older than he did the last time Jason saw him some weeks before.

Bruce started talking and Jason was brought back to reality.

 _“I… I found the book in your bedside table. “The Picture of Dorian Gray.””_ He paused, looked away, then back at the camera. _“You were always reading. I can’t remember the last time I just read a book for fun.”_

It was true. Jason remembered thinking that Bruce’s mind was like a computer itself; he was always learning new stuff – he discussed medicine articles with Leslie, for crying out loud – but he almost never found him in the library just picking up something random to read.

Jason missed the next words out of the Bruce’s mouth. He stopped the video, went back to the folder to check the date. Three months after his death. Clearly, the Replacement hadn’t entered the picture by then.

Jason clenched his jaw. But he still went back to the video, rewound a few seconds, back to _“for fun”_.

 _“I thought… I thought about finishing it. Maybe going to your grave to reading it to you but it seems so… Final. I keep expecting you to just get home,”_ Bruce’s eyes were shining and Jason was transfixed. _“Alfred put two plates down yesterday and I had to leave so I wouldn’t… Wouldn’t break.”_

The video stopped there. Jason was back to breathing hard, but this time breathing exercises were the last thing he could think of. He pulled the chair back and sat down. In the folder, he found there were 33 videos.

He didn’t know what to think.

This time, he checked the date – five months after his death – of the next video before clicking on it.

Bruce was holding a book. It was “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

“That’s not even the first book in the series,” Jason said in a low tone.

 _“It’s not the first book in the series, I know,”_ Bruce said in the video and Jason almost laughed. Instead, he just stared. _“But did you know, it actually depends on the publisher. In 1950, it was the first book published in the series and Macmillian published them in that order too, when they first came to the US. But Harper Collins used the series’ chronological order. It was Lewis’ stepson who suggested it.”_

Jason didn’t know that.

Bruce laughed in the screen. It didn’t sound happy at all.

_“So I’m following the original publishing order. I don’t know if you would have agreed or not. I don’t know if you read them. I know I gave them to you, though I got a new boxset for me. I haven’t… I haven’t been to your room in a while.”_

There was a pause and Jason, despite himself, couldn’t help but to lean forward, as if these were precious moments he couldn’t let slip through his hands.

It was stupid but he really couldn’t help himself.

_“We haven’t touched anything. “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is still there.”_

Another pause. Bruce was just staring ahead. Jason could see his chest moving alongside his breathing. Slow, like usual. It took a lot to get Bruce’s breathing to quicken.

_“Anyway, this was good. I think I read them when I was young, but I don’t remember what I thought of them.”_

Bruce frowned, then put the book on the desk and passed a hand through his hair.

_“I wish we could have read them together.”_

Then the video ended.

Jason leaned back on the chair. Bruce did give him the books. It was after the got an A in an English essay. He didn’t think something so small warranted a gift but Bruce had just laughed. Sometimes, it used to piss Jason off, how easily Bruce just bought things – and this had been a hardcover set, even if not a first edition – but for the most part he could tell that it was just how Bruce was and that he really didn’t see a problem in buying people things. Jason could have probably asked for a first edition and he would have gone to get one.

Jason went back to the folder. There were 31 videos to go. Jesus Christ, did Bruce just do one for every book he read that he thought Jason would like or something?

He wanted to scroll down and check when was the last time he had made a video but stopped himself. Instead he chose a random one; about a year and a half after his death, the twelfth video.

 _“Don’t ask for guarantees,”_ Bruce was looking down at the book in his hands, reading from it. _“And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.”_ Bruce stopped and looked up, showing the cover of the book – Fahrenheit 451. He didn’t say anything right away, just kept staring. Jason rewound the video some seconds.

 _“… and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.”_ He wanted to pause the video there, but stopped himself. He didn’t want to think too hard on this.

He hadn’t been heading for shore. He hadn’t drowned. He had been killed by a murderous clown.

 _“I’m sorry,”_ Bruce’s voice brought him back to reality. _“I’m sorry I didn’t get there in time. You didn’t… You didn’t deserve to die. Not like that, not at all.”_

Another pause. Jesus, Jason remembered this. Bruce was the worst at words. He almost laughed but was too busy looking at Bruce, at the way he glanced down to the book, then back to the camera.

_“It should have been me.”_

The video stopped.

This time, Jason stopped breathing. Only for a few seconds, but he held his breath. Then noisily let it out.

 _“It should have been me,”_ his brain repeated the words back to him and it wasn’t… It wasn’t something he hadn’t thought of. He hadn’t even been sixteen yet. He hadn’t finished high school, he hadn’t decided what he was going to study in college, he hadn’t even gone on a date, for crying out loud. And Bruce… Bruce had lived. Not a perfect life, but fucking longer than Jason’s.

He didn’t know this was something Bruce thought of too. One year and a half later. The Replacement was already in the picture. And yet…

Jason chose a video around two years and two months after his death.

_(Is that how Bruce thought of time too? Before and after his death?)_

Bruce was holding “The Jungle Book”.

 _“My mother read this to me when I was a kid. Well, a simpler version of it. I remember thinking…”_ he smiled and Jason realized it was the first time in two fucking years he didn’t look like he was a step from fucking collapsing. _“How Mowgli was so cool. He got to live in the jungle and be raised by wolves and have animals as his friends. Bagheera was the best,”_ he frowned. _“The monkeys were the worse.”_

Jason couldn’t help it; he laughed out loud.

 _“Thank you,”_ Bruce said and smiled. It was small but real. _“Every day without you hurts. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. You were one of the best things that ever happened to me, Jason, and I’m just sorry… I’m sorry I didn’t get there in time. You deserved better.”_

The video continued for a few more seconds, but it was just Bruce staring at the camera until suddenly it cut off.

 _“You deserved better,”_ again, words repeating themselves inside Jason’s head. He took a deep breath.

These videos were messing with his head. This wasn’t what he thought Bruce had been like after his death. Jason hadn’t thought their minds ran so similar in some things.

He chose the third to last video; a couple months before he returned.

 _“You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing.”_ Bruce showed the cover of the book; it was “A Woman of No Importance.” Jason actually read that one. It was what first got him into Oscar Wilde.

_“I keep thinking about this. About all the things you missed out on. It’s been almost four years since you died, Jason, and not a day goes by that I don’t think of you. Sometimes… Sometimes it’s big things like, “Jason would have gone to college by now,” and other times it’s small things like “I wonder what Jason would have thought about the new Hobbit film.”_

There was a pause.

_“You know, when I was young… I used to wish it had been me who’d been shot. My parents… They were good people and they were changing Gotham. What was I doing that I deserved the gift of life? But I realize now… That they would never have made that choice. Because the death of your child… There’s nothing worse.”_

The video stopped.

Jason thought these videos would be like… Like book reviews. But instead it was messages from Bruce to… To a Jason that didn’t exist anymore.

The final video was made a couple of weeks before Jason was back. It has been months now. Of course Bruce has stopped making the videos. He realized that his son was fully dead and that whoever had come back wasn’t that person. Wasn’t ever going to go to college and yeah, maybe he’d watch the new Hobbit film, but it wouldn’t erase all the blood in his hands.

Jason’s finger hovered over the mouse, almost clicking on that last video but something was stopping him.

What did it matter? So Bruce had missed him. So Bruce thought… Bruce thought that it should have been him who died, that Jason deserved more, that this was… The worst thing to happen to him, even worse than losing his parents.

He closed the folder. The Jason that Bruce missed was dead, had been dead for a long time. Jason wasn’t that boy anymore.

He got up, slowly, not pushing the chair back, and then turned around. And stopped in his tracks.

Bruce was staring at him. He was wearing the batsuit, but the cowl was down. He looked… Jason didn’t know. He was just staring blankly at him.

Jason could feel anger coiling in his stomach. It was always there nowadays, just something he couldn’t get rid of. Every time he saw Bruce, it was like it got worse.

But he also had the urge to run into his arms. He was taller and more built than he used to be, but Bruce was still the bigger man. He would have put his arms around Jason and it would have felt like everything was going to be okay, like nothing could ever hurt him.

But that would have been a lie. He had gotten hurt – he had _died_ – and Bruce hadn’t been there to stop it.

Bruce walked past him, to the desk and Jason stared at his head uncomprehending. He was just going to… to ignore him? Surely, he’d been there long enough to know Jason had found the folder.

He made fists with his hands. What a fucking asshole.

Jason started walking away. Fuck him and fuck this. He was going to leave. Leave Gotham, leave Bruce, just fucking… get away from all this.

“Jason,” Bruce called and he stopped, but didn’t turn around. It wasn’t Batman’s voice, not a command, but it wasn’t the way Bruce used to say his name, back when he was a kid, either.

He kept standing. He should just walk away. God, why was he so weak? He hated Bruce.

“I hate you,” he said and the words felt good leaving his mouth. Even though it also felt like he had lead in his stomach.

“I know,” Bruce said.

Jason turned around, all the time yelling in his brain to not do it. But it was Bruce and… who could ignore him?

Bruce had one book and one package in his hands. Jason frowned.

“It’s…” Bruce looked down, “it’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” I went to your room and picked it up after… after you came back. I thought… You might want it.”

Jason didn’t say anything.

Bruce moved so it was the package on top.

“I was supposed to give this to you on your sixteenth birthday. It’s been on my desk since…” He swallowed. “I kept thinking that it was… dumb not to give it to you. Though I owe you a lot more birthday presents.”

Jason laughed. It wasn’t nice or happy or anything like his laughter used to be. Still, Bruce didn’t react. Jason didn’t know if he preferred it that way or not.

“And Christmas gifts too,” he said, putting all the disdain he could into his voice. “You think this is going to fix things, old man? Buy me enough things and I stop being a psychotic murdered?”

“I don’t think that’s who you are, Jason,” Bruce said and Jason opened his mouth, but he kept talking, “and even if it were… You’re also still my son, Jason.”

Jason clenched his jaw. He could feel tears in the corner of his eyes. God, he felt weak. A few words from Bruce – _words he’d been dreaming of hearing for so long; he used to imagine him saying this when he was sleeping on the cold ground after the Pit. Even two days before he arrived in Gotham, he couldn’t help those fifteen seconds of imagining coming home like he was never gone_ – and he was a fucking mess.

“What’s the gift?” He asked.

Bruce didn’t say anything. Instead he walked until he could extend it to him. It took a few seconds, but eventually Jason grabbed it.

He unwrapped it slowly, not tearing the paper, because he remembered a time when gifts were precious.

It was a first edition of “Pride and Prejudice.”

Jason swallowed, “I thought you’d get me a car for my sixteenth birthday.” He didn’t look into Bruce’s face, just kept staring at the book, reverently.

“We were going to choose one together,” Bruce said and he sounded chocked up. Jason finally looked up and there were tears falling from Bruce’s eyes. He took a step forward and even though he should, Jason didn’t move.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there, Jay-lad. And I’m sorry… I’m sorry for how things have been.” He put a hand on Jason’s shoulder. “I don’t care how you came back. I’m just glad you’re here. No matter what you do… I’ll always be happy you’re back.”

Jason started crying. Still holding the book, he leaned forward until his forehead was touching Bruce’s massive chest and then he was being hugged. At the beginning, almost like he was fragile. But then tightly, like Bruce was afraid he was going to fly away if he didn’t hold him down to earth.

It took a while but eventually Jason stopped crying. He leaned back – though Bruce didn’t fully let go – and took a deep breath.

“Do you want to read to me?”

“Always,” Bruce answered and he didn’t ask from which book. Like it didn’t matter. And maybe it didn’t.


End file.
